


To Choose Forever

by JessaLRynn



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, None - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:17:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6707632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They always start with endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Choose Forever

**Author's Note:**

> 600 word ficlet. Choice... ALWAYS choice. This is what makes us who we are, not the vagaries of a feckless fate. If we have to wrench our selves back from destiny's crimson teeth, so be it.

They always start with endings. From the word "Run", ( _Nice to meet ya, Rose. Run for your life._ ) this has been who they are.  
  
So now, they have come full circle, and this is her, on a winter washed beach, and this is him, walking away without a goodbye as always, and this is also him, standing beside her and taking her hand. And she must, as she always does, choose.  
  
The choice is the imperative thing. She could say, because she was born of stardust and whole cloth, because she is a figment of her own imagination, that she never actually had a choice, in anything. She knows that's not true, because what she created is herself, is who she is, and she knows that, for a single instant at least, she had more choices than most people ever get in a lifetime.  
  
And here she is again, beginning again, with him leaving, her being sent away, him running off, her running into the unknown, him away from her, and him always always right there with her all the same. And here she is, a choice to make, the same choice she always has ( _Do you, Rose Tyler, take this man…_ ) to make, a choice she's only once ever failed to make the first time.  
  
Here he is, too, this time, not an icon or an ideal, not a goal just out of reach, but a man, with one heart, one life and, perhaps, just perhaps, one love. If she chooses it, if she chooses him, all those things, and all that he is, will be this, from now on.  
  
He needs her, he's said, the battle-born war child, and perhaps he does, if he's feeling half what she does right now (blood bathed and sorrow tossed and rejected and beloved and forgotten and unforgettable). It’s human to feel a thousand things at once, and everything she does is so human. Still. For a while longer… or forever, maybe. Who knows?  
  
She can feel him tense at her side, vibrating slightly, because he knows, every instinct he ever had, and every new instinct he will pay hell to earn, everything he is has to be telling him what this part means. He is ready to flee, and she can feel the fear in every fiber of her being, because it is her fear, too, as surely as it is his, because if he knows what this part is, maybe he also knows something she doesn't about why they always do this.  
  
But he still holds her hand, she still holds his, and they are still together, clinging against the inevitable tide on that twice damned and twice abandoned beach. "Can you still see time?" she whispers, tentative and careful, because he's not the only one who needs here, and because there's more than enough pain to go around here.  
  
He looks thoughtful for a moment, pained and surprised at once, and she allows a tiny hint of a smile as he nods slowly, reluctant and wondering at once. "What do you see?" she breathes for them. "How long are you going to stay with me?"  
  
There are echoes of lost worlds, eternities unrealized, in the way he looks at her now, in the way his smile buds and swells and blooms like the flower that gives her her name. There are choices made, and remade, choices that cannot be unmade in a time and place like this. There are tears standing at the corners of dark, bright eyes as he looks into her to say only the truth. "Forever."

* * *


End file.
